The Best Rendering Engine?????
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Hi, I'm an architecture student about to start my 5th year. I use sketchup pro 7 to model all my designs and have been rendering with SU podium now for about a year. I have found podium to be a fantastic engine but I do feel it has some limitations. I plan to continue using podium especially if and when podium 2 comes out
However, I do wish to learn a new rendering package to create those 'wow' images. I have a few months on my hands now to completely learn a package from sctratch. I've been looking at the following options and would appreciate peoples feedback and advice (please state if I am incorrect on any subject. The idea of this post is so I can pick peoples brains and make a decision on what package to to really try to get a hold of):
Kerkythea:
This looks like a good enough program judging by the images I have viewed, however it does seem to lack a bit of extra quality and probably wouldn't be worth my time learning as it doesn't seem to be a great improvement on quality to podium if any improvement at all (with what seems a more complicated interface). This I find to be the beauty of Podium - a fine balance between quality and ease of use.Artlantis:
Although from what I have seen, this package doesnt quite produce the 'photo-realism' of other engines, I really like the images I have seen thus far. I like the ambient light it seems to create and images rendered by this engine always seem to have a nice atmosphere. I have also read that this engine is lightning fast. This is one thing I look for in a rendering engine as I would prefer to spend more time on design. I also quite like the look of the interface for the program. I have given this program strong consideration.Indigo:
Again similar to Artlantis this engine produces a really nice light. The images I have seen so far have also displayed more 'photo-realism' than Artlantis. I am also giving this package due consideration but I would like to carry out more research and check out rendering times and the ease of its interface.Vray:
I have been very impressed with wot I have seen and read about Vray so far. Out of all the packages mentioned, this seems to create the most 'photo-realism' (please correct if I'm wrong). I also like the fresh light look displayed in its output. I know it's expensive but price is not really the issue - I want the best package I can get my hands on so I can produce work I am truly happy with. I know the interface is much more complex than podium's but as I have mentioned I have alot of time on my hands now to try to crack it. Up to know Vray is the package I'm leaning towards (it too is supposed to be lightning fast).Please forgive any ignorance in this message. I am relatively new to the rendering world and I just want to make sure that my next step is the right step. All feedback, advice and opinion is welcome
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To start, there isnt really a 'best' rendering engine. If youve got a good eye for these things you can create great images with any rendering engine.
Having said that, my recommendation would be for kerkythea.
Kerkythea has a wide variety of rendering methods built in which gives you a lot of options when rendering a project. The fact that it has a studio type program is also likely to be useful for you as an architect, as you will find it a lot easier to add veg in kerkythea than in sketchup.
I agree with you on the image quality you get from vray. there does seem to be something quite pleasing about a good vray render. Having said that it seems to be a bit of a dark art getting decent renders from it.
As a slight aside, it might also be worth learning the basics of indigo, as it is a very powerful tool when used in the right situations. As you pointed out it is very good for photoreal renders as it is based on physical principles. It also has a very good interface in the form of skindigo, the indigo plugin for sketchup. The main disadvantage is the rather lengthy amount of time it takes for renders to complete. It is not unusual to leave indigo going for 10 hours+ for a big/complicated render.
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Thanks Remus. This is exactly the type of feedback I was hoping for. I'm just not convinced by the overall quality of kerkythea. I'm already confident enough to produce images of similar quality with podium. As I said the interface provided by podium is a big bonus. I guess I'm just looking for that next step up in quality for that extra wow factor. How is Kerkythea for render time?
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Some time back on the Sketchup Community forum, where there is also much talk of renderers and which is the better one, I had suggested that there be posted a "standard" skp model file, one which included a variety of materials including metal, wood, stone, and mirror, and which had a window and an interior light source to allow for a mix of daylight and artificial light, and a specific camera position so results are better compared. The idea behind this was that anyone could download the model and render it in their engine of choice and post the results. This would level the playing field so that we could more "objectively" compare the results of the various renderers. The problem when viewing renders in the galleries of the various render companies, and those that are posted elsewhere, is that the content is so varied and sometimes striking, that it is hard to make a fair assessment of the specific renderer's contribution as compared to what another renderer could do with the same subject.
I have tried Podium, artlantis, IDX renditioner, Light-up and Accurender Nxt.
So far Accurender has the most impressive results and has an additional feature that allows lines to be rendered, which is often useful in architectural renderings ( although one could achieve a similar result by outputting line work from Sketchup with depth cue on and mixing this with the photoreal render in photoshop)
Lightup has a cool feature that temporarily burns the shadowing into the model so that you can move around the model after the render is complete and still see the effects of the lighting (other than specular lighting effects).All of these benefit from rendering within the Sketchup application, however, I have also had great results, with many additional benefits, by exporting the Sketchup files (as 3DS) and rendering in Carrara. The upside to this is the amount of lighting control and texture editing that this allows. The downside is that it requires the additional steps of an export and more strict discipline of grouping in Sketchup to allow for selections in Carrara. While there is a cost associated with Carrara (Vue is another option too) it does get you a fully functional 3D modelling program in addition to a renderer.
It is also important not to forget what and who your final renders are for and the size they need to be. It is so easy to get caught up in this area of technology, looking for the most perfect render, one that can take hours or days to complete, when oftentimes a 5 minute render can be just as effective.
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I dont know if you've seen the kerky gallery jim (or is it time
http://www.kerkythea.net/joomla/index.php?option=com_wrapper&Itemid=77personally i think some of them are a marked improvement over the general quality of podium stuff.
Whiterabbit, i'll let solo do his bit about why a comparison of rendering engines would be very difficult.
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Hi jim_tim
First you have to keep in mind, about this subject, 2 things: Normally it's not how good the render engine is that's important, it's how good the person who use it that's important; Second in the future, probably, the renders will be divided in two types only: real time (for a comparisson just see any high budget game) and unbiased (other types will mostly be for diferent looks like toon effects and such)...but don't worry because this will still take many years to hapen.
So what i can say to you about renders it's this:
Podium: Great capture of the skethcup easy to use and can produce some nice renders, but it's biggest strenght is it's biggest flaw: keeping things simple also means a big lack of depth in the render configuration, (any user that used 3D software before will reach its limits pretty fast) and because it runs inside sketchup, that right now it's everything but a stable and a up-to-date program, will probably crach in heavier models.
Indigo: This one is one to keep an eye on. The best part of indigo is not the render himself but the exporter skindigo, incredibly simple to learn and use and it's unbiased so it's pretty easy to produce photorealist renders but when you're running out of time that can be a problem. Other thing to keep in mind is that you can have problems exporting very large models if you're not on a 64bits OS.
Kerkythea: A complete render package. Can render both biased (for tigh deadlines) or unbiased (for more realism) and it's incredibly stable. You edit the materials outside sketchup (that be a plus for not relying on a unstable engine, or not if you want to do everything inside sketchup). You can also export a heavy model in parts and merge all in Kerkythea not needing this way a "big" PC for exporting.
Hypershot: A breath of fresh air in the render scene. It's incredibly fast and easy to use but for architectural work the images that produces it's still too CG. Where it really shines it's in industrial renders (metal stuff speccially, cars, objects...) and how it work's with hdris. If not the best, it's certanly one of the best in this department.
V-ray: Going right to the point, right now this is the best render that money can buy. Very fast, great renders and lot of options, but...and there's always a "but", it's anything but easy to master, even if you study the entire manual you'll still be very far away of what the real masters can do with it (there's classes where the main focus is rendering with v-ray...). One of the standarts in the advertising and movie industry.
Other's: Vue - great for landscapes, too CG for interiors; Artlantis - a fast render and setup but doesn't really have highlights any a specific area; Modo - I'm learning and trying this right now just because of the rendering so i can't coment now but it's one of the new rendering architectures that "everyone" it's talking right now and there's plans to release their "nexus" render engine to other Cad products.
So in my opinion kerkythea it's the way to go because its free, it adapts to your projects, and will start you in understanding materials configurations that can be aplied in other renders. If you want to make a carreer with 3D or have money and time to spent, THEN learn V-ray, because sooner or later you'll have a project that you'll need to use it or understand it at least.
Don't forget that the render it's just a small part of a great image, you also have: lightning the scene (one of the most important parts and where you'll probably lose more time with tests), materials (a good material can do miracles in a rough model), learn to random and dirty a scene (there's no perfection in real world) and a good 3d model (a sketchup output of a detailed model will probably be best than a render of a basic model). Just try the most renders you can and choose the best that suits you.
P.S.: Sorry for the long text and hope it helps
David
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@unknownuser said:
Indigo: This one is one to keep an eye on. The best part of indigo is not the render himself but the exporter skindigo, incredibly simple to learn and use and it's unbiased so it's pretty easy to produce photorealist renders but when you're running out of time that can be a problem. Other thing to keep in mind is that you can have problems exporting very large models if you're not on a 64bits OS.
If your model is very large you will have problems exporting your model to indigo whatever OS your running, as SU is not 64 bit and skindigo runs within sketchup.
I imagine this is a problem with most external render engines, though.
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@remus said:
@unknownuser said:
Indigo: This one is one to keep an eye on. The best part of indigo is not the render himself but the exporter skindigo, incredibly simple to learn and use and it's unbiased so it's pretty easy to produce photorealist renders but when you're running out of time that can be a problem. Other thing to keep in mind is that you can have problems exporting very large models if you're not on a 64bits OS.
If your model is very large you will have problems exporting your model to indigo whatever OS your running, as SU is not 64 bit and skindigo runs within sketchup.
I imagine this is a problem with most external render engines, though.
Exactly Remus.
That's one of the reasons the nagging about a 64 bit SU version was popular some time ago.
Most people probably gave up on asking for it, seeing that google doesn't recognise the issue.
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If you're going for photorealism I'd suggest at least looking into Maxwell. Check out the image gallery at http://maxwellrender.com/ (If there's an engine out there with a better gallery, I don't know of it). And here's an old post with some of Richard's Maxwell renderings, http://www.sketchucation.com/forums/scf/viewtopic.php?f=81&t=11121
-Brodie
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Thanks guys.... excellent advice all round. David, thanks for your analysis of the packages it was a great help. I have several months before the start of my 5th year so I think maybe Kerky then Vray is the way to go. I guess I won't know until I start to sink my teeth into these programs.
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jim_tim
Glad i could help
. Keep in mind that when learning you will loose a lot of time in tests but the good thing i can tell you is that in the end you will be able to set up a scene pretty fast (especialy because you will start making a material library as time goes by), but i won't lie there will ALWAYS be some testing. So my best advice is saving each test (even if just a material change) you did with a name that's recogniseble now so that you can see the diferences in the materials, lights, renders methods, in this tests and understand what you want and don't want.kwistenbiebel and remus
What you're saying is correct but i remember some users in the indigo forum saying that when they had to export a heavy model they had exported from a pc with a linux 64 or xp 64 bits and it worked. Why does this work? i have no ideia and never tried this so i can't really confirm it too, but there must be because windows have more memory available to write.
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@unknownuser said:
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kwistenbiebel and remusWhat you're saying is correct but i remember some users in the indigo forum saying that when they had to export a heavy model they had exported from a pc with a linux 64 or xp 64 bits and it worked. Why does this work? i have no ideia and never tried this so i can't really confirm it too, but there must be because windows have more memory available to write.
Interesting....
When working in Linux, Sketchup runs under the 'Wine' emulator right?
Since Sketchup is Not Large Adres Aware and just a single processor thread, I can't see why Linux could change that.
It seems impossible to me that you can spread a task that is monothreaded (like SU) to multiple threads in a dynamic way....
But I don't know much about Linux.
It is interesting though.
Would that also mean that , by running Sketchup through Wine on a Linux box, you can overcome the other shortcomings of Sketchup? (slowlyness, coma, stalls and crashes). -
Sketchup + wine = strange models
(couldn't resist) -
With regards to the 64 bit thing, my guess is that it was indigo running out of memory rather than sketchup, thus by using 64 bit indigo it was able to address enough memory.
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i don't think so kwistenbiebel. Sketchup it's a native 32 bits aplication, so when it exports the exporter itself still runs using one core so no speed gain in there but as he's temporary wrinting on memory, because a 64bits OS still have more memory available that 3.3Gg ram of a 32bits OS, it's a litle hard for you to get an error of out of memory in the 3d export (don't forget of course this using a 64 bits version of indigo).
Of course i'm no coder so i could be just wrong...anyone who know's this better feel free to correct me.
David
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David, if an application is 32 bit it also has a memory limit, even if it is on a 64 bit OS, so still very possible for sketchup to run out of memory.
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have you seen Modo 401 preview render?
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I know remus but indigo is 64 bits. My bridge project i couldn't render it with indigo because i could export it from sketchup but when indigo opened it gave me an error relating to memory. I doubt that would hapen in a 64 bits version. But then again i'm no expert...
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My work addled brain is getting all confused...I'll just take your word for it and let this thread go back on topic.
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All great insight you got here and it truely does come down to what your end goal is. If you are looking to really get into the mainstream of illustration work, you may want to consider v-ray as first priority. It is probably the most widely used in the industry, fastest, and produces top quality. Now, I am talking about final production work that big arcthitecture firms use and animation/illustration/motion graphics studios use. I know not everyone uses it, but it seems to be the most popular, plus it also is incorporated into most of the big name 3d aps., but there is unfortunately no standalone version. The other thing to consider if you are really trying to get serious about illustration is recognizing that there will probably be a point where you are going to need to make the a switch to the 3ds max, due to the limitations of SU in various areas, and v-ray is "THE Rendering Engine" for 3ds max, but from what I am told v-ray for su is fairly similar to vray for max. For just an architect, you may not need all this and another ap may suite you better, but like I said, if you want to get to the level of huge studios like spine3d or neoscape, you will want to learn v-ray. And if you have the time to learn it, which you will honestly need, the workflow can actuallly be very fast. Vray is more about what settings not to touch as opposed to altering a million different things. I recommend reading through the manual and just start playing with different materials. It will definately be worth it if you ahve the time to put into learning it. But the more apps. you learn the better you are so dont just look for one solution.
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